


Reset

by NancyHartigan



Series: 2039 [2]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, Hank plays Sir Not Appearing in this Fic, Pacifist Ending, Philosophical Discussions, Post Game, Still pretty important for a scene though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-04
Updated: 2018-06-04
Packaged: 2019-05-18 07:24:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14848298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NancyHartigan/pseuds/NancyHartigan
Summary: Living peacefully among humans is proving to be difficult. Between casual harassment at home and trying to figure out how to make this world a safer place for androids, North is trying to figure out how to balance her own problems without lashing out. Thankfully, Markus is by her side and providing enough balance.Nobody programmed Markus to deal with jealousy, though, and nobody programmed North to accept herself without validation from somebody else.





	Reset

She had been designed to be the perfect lover, but when she woke up and had made her decisions, North had to question how much of these qualities were just making her self-validation dependent on just that, being someone’s perfect lover.

When she made it to Jericho, for the first month, she had to admit, the urges had been there. Nobody talked about how your programming could rear its ugly head every once in a while, once you’ve deviated; it was still very new, very easy to fall back into your programming when everything was overwhelming, and there were very few offers of relief in her new home.

If you came to Jericho seeking comfort, you came to the wrong place.

Even now, after they have been deemed equal, North had to question how equal they truly were to the humans. It was easy to give these equal rights to someone like Markus, so passionate and gentle, such an independent thinker who painted such beautiful pictures nowadays, now that he had time to do so, in this big, beautiful house that they were sharing, or Josh, who was so intelligent, seeking comfort in the large collection of books.

North, however, was none of those things, and she was aware of it long before.

Sure, the older human of the two that shared their space had welcomed her with open arms, and when he had finally ceased living himself, he had seemed to see right through everything and asked her to take care of Markus. Upon asking the others, she was the only one tasked with this. The younger, Leo, was a little more accurate to what she remembered about humans.

For some reason, however, he seemed to have been avoiding Markus’ wrath, and that was enough to keep him off the red ice and living harmoniously with the leaders of Jericho. Still, it felt a little good when he’d playfully grab at her and make a sarcastic comment every so often.

Sex was self-validation, and with nothing to focus on now, it was so easy to fall back on your programming.

Markus would watch with a protective eye though, as he always had before, and one night recently, after Leo had gone to bed, she felt a pair of strong arms wrapping around her shoulders and pulling her close to his chest, and they entered hibernation mode together, just like that.

The warm hum of his heart component, strong arms pulling her close, his cheekbone against the top of her head…it said so much more than any romp under sheets with a stranger ever could. She had never felt safe in another man’s arms, never felt the same comfort from a low vibration against her back.

It just made her ache.

“Markus!”

Markus snapped out of hibernation to lift his head to see Leo’s face, the movement jarring North awake as well. Leo was tilting his head, tapping his toes while the androids lurched back to live. It might be a smooth process, but he did get used to the mild delay.

“What’s going on, Leo?”

“Can you do me a huge favor today?” Leo asked. “I gotta head out of town for a charity thing, but I don’t remember where ---”

“It’s in the studio, if you’re talking about the exhibition dinner,” Markus interrupted, finally removing North from his arms. “I’ll go get it.” Markus looked down. “North, come with me?”

“Sure.”

“Guys, I didn’t mean grab it _now_ , just when you get time!”

“We got time, Leo,” Markus called back, crossing the dining room to the automatic doors. “I don’t have anything scheduled for a few hours, you’re fine.”

With that, the door closed, and Markus paused to stare at it for a second.

“He’s afraid of you,” North concluded. She had remembered the day Markus had allowed her to access his memories for the first time, remembered that face.

Markus didn’t say anything for a while before he shook his head, heading toward one of the various canvas areas. “He’s learning, that’s all I’m going to ask him to do before it’s out of his system entirely. He meant a lot to Carl, so try to not to let him bother you so much.”

North blinked. “Bother me, he’s not been ---”

“North. I’ve seen how he’s treating you. You have every right to tell him to stop.” Markus lifted a monochromatic blue piece from the pile. “If he doesn’t, I’ll take care of it.”

“Markus…”

“We’ll talk about it after the legislation meeting, alright? We still have a lot of work to do before everything’s really equal.”

North decided to let it go and activated the door for Markus.

\---

It had been a long day.

Some statutes for a human had fit in well to create a go-by for the new android law proposals, but there were others that just didn’t seem to work right, and until they were worked out, discussed amongst the four of them, they truly couldn’t go anywhere.

“Connor, can you cross database with Michigan statutes on first-degree murder?” Markus asked.

Josh seemed to be accessing his own database while Connor was working, but of course, Connor was just a hair faster to finish. It was still humorous to watch them both recite the statutes, however, at least from where North was sitting.

“I like the qualifiers,” Simon said. “Those sound perfect.”

“Speaking as an officer only,” Connor replied, “I find that the only error that might come up later is if the victim is able to be restored.”

“That’s easy,” Josh said with a shrug. “It’s only murder if they are not recoverable or have to be reset externally. If not, attempted murder sounds just fine to me.”

“I disagree,” Connor replied. “If an android dies, they die. I’d hate to lower a charge just because the victim goes into great hands and is miraculously recoverable. It may just encourage attacks to avoid motherboards.”

Markus sat, in deep thought, eyes closed while listening to both arguments. North couldn’t help but notice how the setting sun was illuminating his face through the window, how handsome he was when a warm light was cast over his skin.

Warm. That was the perfect descriptor for him. A comfort from the January cold, an implied light in the dark night.

“What do you think, Markus?” North asked.

“Let’s skip this one for now, until we can get a good popular opinion from the rest of Detroit. That way we will know what everyone thinks and we can argue this better.”

“That’s fair,” Connor said. “I just know that when I had to recover a new body, it never stopped Lieutenant Anderson’s grieving.”

“Let’s try to avoid bringing in the human concept of death. We need to define it ourselves. Before all of this, we were property to be destroyed or damaged, we were never killed or hurt, so it may be easier to handle for human partners and loved ones when that happens if we can properly define a line where we conclude that this android is dead.”

“If we’re going to get these to the House of Representatives, we do need to be able to translate it in a way that makes sense to humans, though,” Simon added. “I second the idea of a popular opinion.”

“Third.” That was Josh again.

“North?” Markus asked.

North sighed and leaned against the wall. Markus and she still had a lot of differences, but…this was important, much more important than just blindly agreeing with him. “No. If it’s hard to define for _us_ , how is it going to be defined by everyone else? We need to make this distinction and not leave it to the ones who haven’t woken up yet.”

“They have the right to an opinion on this, North,” Markus said patiently.

“How do you know they aren’t going to vote the way their humans want them to, though?” she pressed. “There are protocols in a lot of us that seek out human approval, and if you want to keep their concept of death out of this, we can’t let them even have a sidebar to it.”

Josh’s LED went from yellow back to blue, finishing processing something. “I might have a compromise, if we need it.”

“Let Connor vote first and then let’s hear it. Connor?”

Connor froze a little bit, clearly not used to being included in their little group yet, still surprised that he gets a chance to speak. Silly Connor, he should know with all this information he was providing that Markus valued his opinion and interpretation.

“I think I’m agreeing with North, and dissenting, with respect, that my decision is not based on excluding the humans from this, but solely around personal experience. Once a body is destroyed and I was replaced, a lot of memory was lost. Valuable memory I can’t recover easily. Convincing Lieutenant that I was very much the same…person, it seemed impossible, even to me.”

“You seem to fall back on Lieutenant Anderson a lot,” North commented. “Should we just bring him in here and have him speak your mind for you?”

“North.” Markus again. A quiet warning.

“Actually, I think he’d disagree with me on this subject. Keep in mind that I didn’t deviate from my programming until much later than you four, so my experiences are a lot different. If he was here to speak his mind, I suspect that he’d view murder of an android as a forced shut down, if we really do want to consider a human opinion in this matter.”

“Well, it’s a good place to start, at least,” Markus added. “Josh, you said you think that there’s a compromise?”

“I just found an old insurance company who had the concept of an android being ‘totaled,’ where the damage of an android exceeds the cost to repair them. That could be a good marking point for a death, if they are going to go to the scrap yard.”

Markus looked visibly pained at the mention of a scrap yard, and North knew exactly why, but…it was best to not mention that, not until absolutely necessary.

“We’ll add it into the survey, at least. Majority vote goes to finding the popular opinion.”

\---

“Alarm system deactivated. Welcome home, Markus.”

Music to North’s fucking ears if she ever heard it. Her nerves were absolutely fried, and she knew that she wasn’t the only one. Josh had used quite a bit of memory trying to keep everything they will need to review or submit, and Markus was probably stressed out from needing to act the mediator, because he headed straight for the studio.

After some debate, North decided to go ahead and follow him in. Watching Markus painting was an experience in itself, and she could watch him paint for as long as he was doing it.

As always, he closed his eyes and off his hand went. A stroke of red here, some purple there, it was always hard to tell what was on his mind before the canvas exploded with color. It fascinated North, in a lot of ways, how he could just put his feelings out there, for the whole world to see, with nothing but pigmented oils.

The result was a portrait this time. Carl, on the lift, painting something that the audience couldn’t see. Stretching as far as he could make himself.

“What do you think?” Markus asked, suddenly, startling North slightly. He hadn’t acknowledged her when she came in.

She tilted her head slightly. “I think it’d look great in the foyer. It’s a great testament to him.”

Markus stepped back, looking it over. “I think I like it too.”

“Are you thinking about becoming an artist when everything is over and done with?”

Markus’ answer was quick and simple. “I don’t want money to get involved with it. It’s something that I can’t quite define.”

North leaned against his arm. “I get it, I think.” She reached down, fingertips touching his, her skin slowly stripping so that she could let him feel _her_ , unobstructed.

Markus stripped his skin at the hand as well, giving her the same, and he looked down at her, finally facing her fully, the first time for the day. His free hand went around her waist, pulling her close. North’s instinct was to crane her neck and move to her toes, letting her weight fall against Markus comfortably while he leaned down to brush his lips against hers.

She fell back to the familiar when the going was rough, but he always craved the thrill of the new when the same was expected in him. That’s what made him the leader that he was. What made it worse was now he was in _her_ comfort zone, while still pushing her into something new. Sex was one thing for North, it was the intimacy she had feared when he had kissed her in front of the store. The truth was that she knew she needed to go along with it to avoid being caught, but the similarities and differences had overloaded her.

She knew the feeling of being kissed senselessly, trapped against a wall. It had never been something languid, like they had all the time in the world, that she could push him off if she needed to (and she had needed to).

Touching him like this, with new memories made, last night brought itself in the forefront of her mind. Markus seeing the playful slap on her ass, the unjustified anger that made itself apparent, the relief of holding her in his arms at the end of the night. It was only fair that she send him her side of the story, sending it right back.

_I’m sorry if I hurt you, I just can’t fight being used to it by now_.

_What can I do to help you?_

North wasn’t used to this question from Markus. Usually, it was him claiming he needed somebody’s help. How could he help her with this? Well, she certainly knew one thing.

_I already know it, Markus, but I need you to tell me_.

Markus pulled away to stare her in the eyes, no words passing, no time passing. Time was standing still. The world was standing still.

His bare hand left hers to caress her face, and tilting her chin to make sure that she could stare into his eyes, which told her everything so many times before.

“I love you, North. Is it so wrong I want you all for myself? You broke through your programming to become someone so strong and can choose your own path now, so stay with me, North.”

North smiled to herself, kissing him again. Her heart was fluttering, and it was new, but…there was comfort in the familiar.

Markus was the most familiar thing she knew, right now.


End file.
